


an ache in the empty

by sunflower_8



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Dissociation, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Komaeda Nagito-centric, M/M, Memory Issues, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mentions of Non-Consensual Drugging, Nightmares, Nonlinear Narration, One Night Stands, Sexual Content, Smoking (minor), Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, dubcon, kind of?, minor mentions of bad eating habits, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:29:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25076899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/pseuds/sunflower_8
Summary: but soon, in waking, a human will cave, convince themselves that an image is reality, that it is a moving photograph under their hands, that every tragedy they have ever forced themselves through is actually a piece of their past, a forgotten piece, because it is so difficult to hold onto memory when the hands start to shift with the ink.in this sense-- in these two senses, rather-- komaeda nagito has always known this.he has always had nightmares.(or, the lines between reality and fiction smear together as komaeda shifts in and out of nightmares)
Relationships: Hinata Hajime/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 23
Kudos: 95





	an ache in the empty

he has always had nightmares. 

nightmares come in two sects, as some may not know. one is the kind in deep sleep, eyes twitching against a mattress as a mind recalls faces seen before, summons scares from dirt that is endless, and a person is too slow, too sluggish, in a nightmare, but their heart pounds pounds pounds with the visceral desperation, the human instinct, to flee. one is the kind in deep sleep, where one jolts from bed, recalling visions and emotions, and they leave the nightlight on and pace around in an aching, aching repetition.

the other is a kind in waking.

waking, as in the continuation of being conscious. in the quiet places of a building, they will find themselves rocking rhythmically to the call of nightingales, the repeated pecking against a slab of wood as they recall recall recall what has never quite happened. waking, as in the act of raising knees to a chest and hands to a temple of a thousand gospels, the gospels being the truth fought against, being the images that are not real,

_ they can’t be real can’t be real can’t be real- _

but soon, in waking, a human will cave, convince themselves that an image is reality, that it is a moving photograph under their hands, that every tragedy they have ever forced themselves through is actually a piece of their past, a forgotten piece, because it is so  _ difficult  _ to hold onto memory when the hands start to shift with the ink.

in this sense-- in these two senses, rather-- komaeda nagito has always known this.

he has always had nightmares.

\--

one comes in a package at his doorstep, a wrapped-up present of prescriptions he refuses to take and a simple post-it note that reads  _ go to sleep _ . and he is in a constant state of sleep, really, a cycle he can never escape-- but he obeys the message, anyway, because being a hypersomniac does not sound quite so bad, really.

(not that hypersomnia is something an individual can pick. he is not idiotic enough to assume that. maybe if he reads through more script, though, and dreams hard enough, he will open his eyes to a realm of never-being-awake. and, well, it would be the most hopeful thing he could ever experience.)

he follows a ritual before he sleeps. he slips off his clothes, brushes his teeth, all while avoiding the mirror he cleaned seventeen times in the past five days. he makes the bed only to destroy its beauty, laying in it and whispering to himself  _ hope the bed bugs don’t bite.  _ he leaves the curtain and window open because selfishly,  _ selfishly,  _ he hopes the wind will carry something to kill him, to stab him in the juncture of his neck and spine to hopefully paralyze him or worse. the cool breeze is almost frigid against the tracks of his skin, and yet he sweats under the duvet, almost anticipating something to come.

(he still faces it without medication, though. he doesn’t want to be sedated. he doesn’t want to be drugged.

never again.)

\--

_ hair like vipers, black black black _

_ (butnotquiteblack) _

_ louder, louder _

_ wrist around hand, bruising where is my circulation beat beat, _

_ beat beat, _

_ flash of a camera flash flash flash flash against my  _ **_pathetic pathetic_ **

_ something, and then nothing, and then bruising and nothing nothing nothing _

**_hair like vipers_ **

\--

he awakens at an hour, then, an hour that beckons the nightmares he is plagued with. wide eyes, choked throat, bright smile despite the salt on his cupid’s bow-- he remembers, remembers the salt on his bottom lip, swiped away with a thumb. he remembers the way his knees felt. he remembers suffocating, and he turns away.

_ i had a dream,  _ he calls to the empty side of his bed, sheets pressed like lavender postcards and ‘where are you’s.  _ i had a dream i was gossamer thin, and hope tasted like charcoal and ash, and i never said a word.  _ when his words lay empty, he wrings his hands free of words,  _ i’m dreaming, i’m dreaming, i don’t want to dream but in the dream, they loved me, _

_ and doesn’t that make it worth it? _

his fingertips burn in the same places they brush scorching tears aside, and he hiccups to the pillow for hours. he does not want to be a ghost, he does not want to haunt, he wants to fade fade fade so that maybe, then, nobody can touch him. nobody can study him with arachnid eyes and vulture beaks; nobody can rip him apart in the way someone never has, but he always thinks these nothings alive. he does not want to be a ghost because he does not want to think himself alive.

when the rivulets find their place in a mattress, unwavering, he finds himself curled on his right side, eyes shut with a hesitance.

(he never sleeps on his back, because he hears that sleep paralysis is more likely in that position. he does not want to have sleep paralysis again, because he is too old, now, for his dead mother to brush his silvery hairs from his forehead and coax him with a lullaby.

he will not be placated. he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.)

he does not dream again. he does not take it as a sign of mercy.

\--

he is in a grocery store when he learns to be afraid.

almond milk goes into the cart, followed by a plastic bag of avocados. then, lemon juice, loaves of bread, a couple of red apples for the sake of self-indulgence, and then he makes his way to a different aisle. spirits for the long nights, when he’s driven down by melancholy, by despair-- a bottle of white wine, then. he makes it there, easy steps, fingers wrap around the throat of the flask, and then-

_ i don’t trust wine, because you can easily slip something into it, and i will spin spin and someone will catch me, carry me upstairs to a room of cinder and cinnamon and i don’t want to wake up without a headache don’t want to feel weight on my legs- _

he blinks. breathes in.

places the bottle back. 

today just isn’t his day, then. 

someone reaches around him, grabbing something on the shelves beside him, and he apologizes and stumbles as he tries to get away, to give them space, but he almost trips and he hears a litany of  _ sir, are you okay _ \- and he nods, nods, nods, pushes his cart with white-knuckled hands, pushes so hard that he almost rams into aisles as he walks to the self-checkout lane,

and he accidentally punches in four avocados instead of three, but it’s fine, he can spare the money, and he’s lucky enough for nobody to notice,

and he forgets to buy shampoo but it’s okay, it really is, because he’s out of the grocery store now and he can  _ breathe  _ again.

(the drive home is a blur. he may have gotten into a car accident. he may have survived. he knows, through the stories of his nightmares, that he will get into a car crash someday. for now, he is uncertain, but no matter what occurs, he ends up in his apartment again, and he drinks all of the wine in one sitting and falls asleep at five pm on the hardwood floor.

and when he wakes up, his first instinct is to cry.

and if he did, if he didn’t, it’s not of matter. nobody could see it, anyway.)

\--

he doesn’t know how it started.

he wasn’t born like this. 

when he was born, he was a miracle of an almost-miscarriage birth, causing destruction in his cradle (his first word was no). his parents loved him like they loved all else-- they did not love at all-- and he learned at first thought that his footsteps cause pain, misery, luck. it was a burden hefted to his shoulders, his chest, his concave stomach-- he learns with time. 

soon, he loses people. soon, he is alone. soon, he understands this is how it’ll always be. a cycle of loss, a cycle of luck, a cycle of longing for something  _ greater.  _ soon, he finds comfort in the lines written by famous poets. soon, he finds safety nowhere, not even in solitude, because soon-

soon, the thoughts come.

and that’s all there is to note.

\--

knees to chest,  _ what are you doing,  _ a whisper from the wall,  _ tell me your secrets, i will suck you dry and replace your fear with redemption, tell me what you think of at night, tell me tell me tell me- _

_ i think of him,  _ a reply, terrified,  _ i think of him and i think of how he hurts me and how he eats away at my skin, rips with fingernails, i think of the ache i feel so loud, so torn and i bleed silver, golden blood, i want to consume myself in him because he is there when i am not but he hurts me so bad, so bad that i start to breathe again but i am suffocating i just want him here but what if he hurts me, would i deserve that, i learned to accept pain with a smile- _

_ we know,  _ the first interruption,  _ we know. _

_ heat, everywhere, it’s scalding. three pairs of hands, i don’t know why they’re there, when familiarity became a monster, and i don’t know him but i never thought he would tear me to shreds and i never thought i would fall in love with vivisections. _

_ you always loved the unclean. _

_ i’m so dirty, i’m covered in him, i can’t scrub it off- _

_ it never happened. _

_ then what did, what did, i don’t know what happened i wish i was just a piece of fiction that someone will find in a hundred years and cradle to their chest, i want to be something shakespeare wrote in calligraphy ink as his theatre burned down, i want to be emily dickinson’s muse, i want to be taken by the death she so describes i want to be nothing, just flimsy paper, i want to be typewrite i want to be- _

_ stop.  _ it commands. stopping,  _ why are you trying to destroy yourself? _

_ because i  _

_ i  _

_ i need it,  _ the final conclusion, rising from the floor, leaving fluorescent lights on, trying to bite an apple on the countertop again.

\--

it hits a fever pitch at a bar.

he leaves the house, again, goes with the fervent desperation to get drunk. he doesn’t like intoxication, but he likes the haze, because it all feels hazy anyway but at least he can’t  _ think _ , then.

the bartender doesn’t know him and he doesn’t expect him to, but he still feels drops of melancholy slip into his drink (like poison like drugs he’s going to kill you he’s going to pull you into a room and) as he accepts it, steps away, drinks one two three four five six  _ shots shots shots _ ,

hand around his wrist, pulled into a bathroom, hand down his pants and his head hits the door and part of him screams  _ why are you doing this, green eyes, he can  _ **_hurt_ ** _ you  _ but louder he hears a cacophony of  _ i don’t care, he can take me,  _ and he presses harder on the head and the muffled moan he lets out is almost nothing and he finishes fast because he needs it done, quickly, and his knees threaten to buckle as the finally do, taking out the stranger from another’s pants--

it slows down as he watches the man murmur, “are you okay?”

and it’s- so loud- that he swallows- hard- and then swallows- what’s hard- because the man does not soften- in concern- that’s for expressions- to do- and soon- he  _ chokes _ \- but he is- not a captive- to his mind- man is not mind- man is a stranger- what he’s doing is even stranger- pleads for a quick and easy

_ release- _

they straighten up, he curses himself for forgetting mouthwash while the man awkwardly throws away toilet paper and says, “my name is hinata hajime.” 

and he isn’t sure why hinata hajime is so loud, so odd, but all he can think is that he can stop the nightmares if he pushes the other to the bed and rides him until they are spaceless and he can send himself far away, mentally, allow the scorching heat to rid him of all his paranoias and instead finally fill him with something worthwhile. so he wipes his mouth, says  _ my name is komaeda nagito, would you like my number  _ except he stumbles on the words, still drunk, coming down, and hinata nods.

soon he has a number and a man in a cab, and they stumble to his apartment and barely get their shirts off before they’re retching in a toilet and his throat hurts so bad he can hardly talk,

and they sleep together, that night.

\--

_ selfish saliva mouth wide jaw unhinged you viper _

_ stripped and still, loathed, still,  _

_ stare at your grave ask why you died from a  _

_ scratchy throat _

_ (but it’s not real, it’s not real) _

_ you will never be able to why you are so torn and you are words but shakespeare will never a liar into his scripts _

_ so die if that’s what theyspeakstate(say) _

_ (so die) _

_ if you throw yourself at hair like vipers and green eyes you will  _

_ never explain _

_ because nobody has hurt you just want them want to be ripped to shreds you are you are nothing why are you here does not beckon you _

_ nobody would wrap their hands around your wrists, neck, shove them down and take you, because _

\--

he wakes up to an arm shaking him and a face he doesn’t remember. light freckles, tan skin, tawny hair-- green eyes-- pretty nose, concerned expression, “are you okay?”

he smiles a caliber not worthy to be real, fake and flimsy and  _ gossamer  _ thin,  _ i’m okay, sorry, who are you?  _ he smiles wider,  _ i’m komaeda nagito. _

“hinata hajime,” he states  _ repeats repeats-  _ “i think we had sex yesterday.”

he’s blunt. the walls whisper  _ try a cigarette,  _ and he thinks, oddly enough, that this is a dream. but hinata looks more like a dream, like reality, or maybe white wine is the taste of love and he’s never bypassed infatuation. infatuation or lust because he is a whore, and  _ oh, i apologize. um, do you have a hangover…? _

hinata waves it off. “nah, it’s fine. i should get out of your hair.” and he must have kissed the hardwood goodnight or carried a lady to the peak of a mountain because his eyes  _ must  _ shine more silver than the moon, sharp enough for hinata to hesitate and say, “ibuprofen… might be nice, though.” and he smiles for a few short seconds before the corner of his lips taper to cracked skin and he stops.

_ okay,  _ he says, leaves his bed.

in the kitchen, hinata makes conversation, scratching the back of his neck-- if he is stabbed there, he would be encased in paralysis-- and commenting, “nice place.”

he fights the urge to refute that with a gesture to the defeated floorboards or the dirty dishes in his sink, but instead he laughs and hands him some water, says  _ thank you,  _ decidedly does nothing about his own pain. instead, before hinata says something else, he asks,  _ do you have somewhere to be? _

and hinata says no.

(he stores it in the back of his mind.)

the day is a haze as it always is, conversation not quite listless but still talk of sleepwalkers, and he must have lead them around in enough circles for him to come to with a countertop against his back, lips against his,

and part of him wants to  _ panic _ ,

and part wants to  _ serve. _

they find themselves in a bedroom.

\--

he is not born to nightmares, but he has not fully settled in his adolescent bones when they come.

age fourteen, stricken with a curled-up compulsion, sobbing into the sink because  _ are you real, are you real, are you real,  _ plays through his head like a record-scratch record, and his eyes clear when he starts to remember every piece of tattered fabric, recites for memory the memory he crafted, where he does not enter with a drink, he is given it, and he swears to the mirror that he will make himself real even if he has to serve himself to exist, because  _ does he exist does he exist  _ and he needs more than luck, needs to pine, and words cannot  _ express  _ how much he  _ wishes  _ he could be used even though he’s  _ terrified  _ and  _ you can’t be traumatized if you aren’t real _ and he writes poetry but all of it means nothing because

_ poetry can’t describe how badly he wants to drown in a mirage too terrifying to tread. _

he is made of bones and futures tossed aside, nails too long and called effeminate, he is waning body and waxing nightmares, smears his eyes in darkness so he will not see, and he shivers underneath sheets swearing to be beyond eating, beyond dreaming, but he understands where he will be at the age of twenty one.

(if luck is at his side.)

\--

he is twenty one and fingers are stretching inside of him.

palms against a tan chest, he buries his head against his neck and whimpers into sinew, jolting when a place is pressed, jolting when there is warmth. he sweats, liquor in the pocket of the jeans on the floor, and  _ have you d-done this before? _

hinata smirks a little, eyes anxious, dark, lidded,  _ focused.  _ “yeah,” he keeps it vague, pushes against the one spot in him hard enough for his entire body to quiver, flushed like sanguine and his blood (golden laced), and- “have you?”

_ yes,  _

and it isn’t a lie, at first. sometimes, he forgets that this isn’t his first time. sometimes, he forgets that he isn’t property of hair like vipers. sometimes, he forgets he’s even here at all, floating through the fingers slipping out, something larger pressing in, and he clings for dear life and scratches at his back, bouncing up and down up and down but he still isn’t  _ here. _

“you’re such a sl-slut,” hinata growls, and he rocks his hips down harder hoping that the clattering sound of bones hitting bones will be enough to call him back, but it isn’t, he is still wandering in the shrinking world of sex and  _ has he not been here before _ ?

and maybe he comes to the hickeys and the dirty talk-- it’s not good, but it’s better than what he’s heard before-- or maybe he comes to the sharp thrusts and hand wrapped around his cock, but he doesn’t close his eyes when he comes and he waits for hinata to first. he wants control on  _ this _ , at least.

(he sees nondescript white, then, when he does.)

and hinata cleans up while he adjusts to the stickiness of gossamer thin sheens of sweat on his forehead, an endless mark of a sin he will forget tomorrow, not because of intoxication, but because fake memories are a parasite that swallow up the real ones and  _ in this sense,  _ he has been having sex since he was fourteen.

hinata sleeps beside him, arm around his back, chin on his head-- and komaeda doesn’t sleep at the hour of one pm. but he does lay awake and think for hours,

and when he’s  _ there,  _ the thought comes easily:  _ maybe i’m a natural at this _ .

\--

the nightmares don’t stop.

soon, he is facing the barrel of a gun, surviving on luck and the knowledge of  _ i’ve done this before, back when i was sixteen, it’s no big deal--  _ and he can  _ swear  _ he met this girl in the hospital, but back then her name wasn’t so refreshing on his tongue, so she must be a liar-- and oh, luck? he is free from it, now, see? because he brought this upon himself, and luck has always been the silent fire behind nightmares and control, so he is unlucky even if that’s all he used to be-- because oh, he isn’t  _ anything _ , actually, no worries-- his therapist says  _ you’re contradicting himself _ \-- and he’s not, because it’s natural to exist and be fiction at the same time,

and he has sex with hinata again the moment he gets out.

hinata tries pillowtalk, but it’s a lot easier, then, to just  _ talk to the pillow,  _ and he isn’t crazy or traumatized because he doesn’t hear voices, he just  _ knows  _ that what he has lived through isn’t linear, there’s no proof, just memories, and hinata asks, “where are the memories?” and he shrugs,  _ do i need them?  _ and he bites back,  _ i am not myself _ and it’s agitating, really, to feel hinata’s hands on his cheeks,

because he doesn’t  _ remember  _ being loved.

(there are two kinds of nightmares and both are reality,

and komaeda nagito doesn’t sleep.)

and he’s alright with being gossamer thin, now.

\--

he doesn’t wake up, but he isn’t asleep.

his twenty three year old self, now, does not fit in bones still confined to twenty one. he’s confused by this, as he is confused by the house he is in. he avoids the kitchen knives because he knows what they are capable of (but there isn’t a mar on his skin, never was, he is not twenty one he cannot be) and it is luck that opens the cereal box (but he isn’t lucky, not anymore, luck has never followed him to his dreams) and he is too sick to finish the cereal so he pours it down the sink (why can’t he remember, he wants to remember) and he tears at his hair (i want to remember please please) and clumps come out (when i was twelve i thought i’d die, here, but at fourteen i thought i’d live so am i awake or dying) and he laughs at them (he’s artificial, pathetic, nobody will believe him) and he doesn't know where to place himself (so die), 

(so die).

\--

he starts to think, with a mind half functioning, that maybe he never did cause misery since his birth; maybe it just came to him in a nightmare. all that built his character is a null char, and he is not sure where luck is, where hope is, where despair is. it hurts, sometimes, so strongly that he tries to claw his heart out of his chest because  _ why am i not who i’m supposed to be, what will they say, what will they say _ \-- and he does not know how to fix this, how to stop this, how to live with heartbeats and concrete thought rather than abstract constructions of a fucked up mind.

he isn’t komaeda nagito, anymore.

and it is  _ this thought _ that breaks it all.

\--

the final conversation he remembers happens on the floor of the kitchen.

“where have you been?” hinata asks. “it’s been two hours.”

_ huh,  _ he mumbles.  _ thought it to be years. _

“we had sex and now you’re sitting here.”

_ i’ve had sex with you a thousand times, right? _

“this is the second time. by the way, i’m… really fucking sorry. i took advantage of you when you weren’t feeling well, and… that’s… unforgivable of me. i was gonna just leave when i didn’t see you, but… i needed to apologize for that. so, sorry.”

_ second time? _

“are you drunk?”

_ we can be. _

“no. komaeda, i think you need help.”

_ i got it. _

“no. komaeda, i think you need help.”

_ didn’t you already say that? _

“shit, look at me, you’re hyperventilating-”

_ green eyes- _

“oh fuck this. hey, i’m with a- a person- and i don’t know what’s wrong, he isn’t breathing, we need a doctor, address is-”

**_green eyes-_ **

“komaeda-”

_ i just want you to consume me whole- _

_ komaeda, please. _

_ … _

_ fuck, the ambulance are coming, it’s- _

_ you’re quiet, now. _

_ i can’t hear what you’re saying. jesus fuck, what did i get myself into, you’re- _

“who am i?”

_ komaeda- _

“i’m not…”

“i’ve got you. you’ll be okay.”

“it’s just a nightmare-”

“shh, shh, breathe, please just fucking-”

_ gossamer thin. _

\--

he has always had nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK daydream induced trauma, all my homies HATE daydream induced trauma. 
> 
> ahem
> 
> yeah this isn't supposed to make sense but uhhh i hope it made enough sense to be enjoyable? 
> 
> ALSO ALSO :D i have a tumblr now! https://fieldofsunflowers8.tumblr.com/ is the link, um, i don't know what i'm doing, but!!! i post entirely too much already umm yeah!!! 
> 
> okay anyways sorry for just... [shoves massive shitstorm of a fic into ur hands asmr]... i hope it was at least okay? i don't know if it's okay. i hope so? there was a lot more i wanted to go with on this topic, but at some point it kind of made me feel Funky, so i gave up on expanding it. maybe if people like this, i'll write something else? not sure! hope you like it anyway :D
> 
> bye, lovelies!


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